


What Dreams May Come

by prairiecrow



Series: One Degree of Separation [4]
Category: A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Genre: Dreams, Love, M/M, Robots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-20
Updated: 2012-02-20
Packaged: 2017-10-31 11:27:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/343543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairiecrow/pseuds/prairiecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joe is in the habit of posing unusual questions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Dreams May Come

**Author's Note:**

> Set after the end of the movie.

"Allen?"  
  
"Hm?"  
  
"Did David dream?"  
  
Hobby looked up from the thesis proposal he was reviewing and gazed curiously at Joe, who had turned in his secretary's chair to regard his owner with bright unblinking eyes. He'd become used to these apparent non sequiters from his mecha, and had also learned that with Joe such questions were seldom as random or as pointless as they might appear at first.   
  
"I don't believe so," he replied seriously, giving Joe his full attention. "He never slept, and Monica never reported any activity similar to what humans are describing when they use the word 'dream'."  
  
Joe's precisely drawn eyebrows drew together a little and he cocked his head fractionally. "But he spoke of the Blue Fairy."  
  
"He did, yes."   
  
"And you've said that the Blue Fairy wasn't real."  
  
"Certainly not. She was a figure in a fairy tale, a fictional story made up to entertain children."  
  
"But dreams are also not real," Joe pointed out, "and yet humans believe in them completely while they're happening."  
  
"That's usually the case, yes."  
  
"Only two days ago, you awakened in the middle of the night convinced that David was here. I know because you called out his name and looked around as if he were in the room and you expected to see him."  
  
"Did I?" Hobby didn't remember the incident in question, but he had no reason to doubt that it had occurred.   
  
Joe nodded. "But I kissed you and told you that he wasn't there, and you went quickly back to sleep."  
  
"Dreams can seem very real to the dreamer — until they wake up," Hobby explained. "Then they realize that it's only a figment of their sleeping imagination."  
  
"And the Blue Fairy seemed very real to David, even though she was equally  _un_ real." A slightly more emphatic tilt of his sleek head. "Was that a dream, then?"  
  
Hobby smiled, reflecting that even after almost four months of ownership, of serving him as secretary and pilot and sensuality simulator, Joe was still capable of surprising him.  
  
"No," he responded, "not in its usual sense. You see, the word 'dream' has two distinct meanings. One is an unreal audiovisual hallucination that takes place in the human brain during sleep. The other is a goal that one conceives and holds onto, letting it guide one's course of action."  
  
Joe regarded him for a couple of seconds; Hobby could almost hear the electricity flashing through his neural cube as he processed that input. "Even if that goal is not in harmony with reality?"  
  
"Especially if that goal is not in harmony with reality," Hobby stated, and waited again while Joe absorbed the new information.  
  
"So," the lover-mecha said at last, "David  _did_  dream after all. The Blue Fairy wasn't real, but he was drawn to the image of her and the thought of what she could do for him when he found her. He held onto that in spite of everything, following her until the very end."  
  
Hobby nodded, pleased and impressed with the subtlety of the robot's reasoning. "That's right, Joe."  
  
"But mecha do not dream," Joe continued. "Only orga live another life while they sleep and follow visions of what might one day come to be, but isn't yet."  
  
"But that's not true," Hobby corrected him, still smiling fondly. "You have your own ideas about the ultimate outcome of the mecha/orga situation."  
  
"That is not a dream," Joe stated, regarding Hobby with his eyes of cool electric jade. "That is a projection based on realities that can be seen on any street, in Rouge City or elsewhere."  
  
"Some would say you're bandying semantics." He clarified when Joe cocked his head in a different way, the one that telegraphed puzzlement: "Playing with words that fundamentally mean the same thing."  
  
Joe sidestepped the question. "But David did dream. Does that mean that he wasn't fully mecha?"  
  
Hobby knew enough now to realize that this didn't mean Joe wouldn't come back to the deflected issue at some other time. He stuck to the current topic of conversation. "David was a mecha of a qualitatively different order." He regarded Joe for a beat, then pushed back from his desk and held out his hand. Joe rose and came to him at once, settling down on his lap and draping one arm around his owner's shoulders, his other hand coming to rest elegantly on Hobby's chest just to the left of his tie. Looking up into those intent artificial eyes, Hobby let himself smile with open affection. "And so are you, in your own way."  
  
Joe ran light fingertips across Hobby's shirtfront, studying him with a flirtatious gaze and a relentless clockwork mind. "And does that mean that I too will dream, one day?"  
  
Thinking of how Joe still manifested memories of the lost child-mecha and offered observations like the ones that had just passed his rosepetal lips, Hobby settled one arm around his slender waist and reached up to cup his sculpted jaw. "You have already," he said, and drew his improbable lover down to share a leisurely kiss.  
  
THE END


End file.
